Posted
by
Zonkon Monday February 27, 2006 @06:39AM
from the stay-in-and-play dept.

Patrick Curry, currently working on the next-gen John Woo title Stranglehold has a blog where he posts short, interesting idea kernels for games. His most recent post, entitled Snow Day, really grabbed my attention. From the post: "Snow Day is an open-world game where you play as a kid in a small town that's been completely snowed in. The schools and businesses are all closed, so for this one day the kids can do whatever they want! You can have a snowball fight, make a snowman, make snow-angels, or build a fort. As you explore the town you find items that unlock new activities, like sledding, skiing, snowboarding, and ice-skating ... Snow Day gets really interesting when you start thinking of it as a multiplayer game. Suddenly the casual activities turn into a tournament, a sort of Winter Olympics for kids. Snow Day has most of the classic gameplay archetypes... exploring, racing, and some very light combat. But it also has creative gameplay, in building forts, snowmen, and all of the other ways you could manipulate the environment." Some of his other game idea posts include Oval Office, a president sim, and Freelance Foto, an on-the-run photojournalist game.

It's been said that the brain is a muscle and we must exercise it or risk letting it go to waste.This type of game where we can totally simulate playing in the outdoors is great for all those pasty kids who don't want to actually experience it firsthand. It makes a great, safe place where these kids can congregate without actually having to do anything but log on.

Contrast this with a game like DDR or actually getting dressed up to go play in the snow. You get all sweaty and gross and have to interact with

>...exercise it or risk letting it go to waste.>...pasty kids who don't want...>...sweaty and gross...>...interact with actual people who you can't block with the click of a button.

Part of growing in life is leaving your comfort zone, and that comfort zone can be defined physically, emotionally, intellectually, and even culinarily.

IMHO:If we stay too far inside our comfort zone, too much of the time, we're missing too much of the value of life. For that matter, everyone (that dread "everyone") moans about the lack of civility in modern discourse, public and politic. I see part of the reason being in cable TV. Once upon a time, we all got our news feeds from the same 3 networks, 4 if you include PBS. Maybe some of us weren't in our comfort zones when watching the news, but we all shared a core zone. Now with cable diversity, we can stay in our comfort zone when watching the news - Fox, CNN, PBS, conventional network, etc. The same is now true on radio, as well. But our shared core is gone, and our world-views based on the news have diverged, as well.

In addition, getting more of our interaction online can be damaging, too. We could seek out a more diverse group of people to interact with - people who would normally be kept far beyond our reach by simple geography and today's tendancy not to write letters. But instead we have an understandable tendancy to seek out like-minded people for discourse - regardless of geography. This bypasses important lessons in how to cope with disagreements and the downright ornery.

Besides, part of the fun of going outside to play in the snow was coming in after, sitting in front of the vent (forced hot-air heat) and drinking a cup of hot chocolate and eating Graham crackers while watching a little TV.

Yes, let's all design games and have nobody develop them!It's nice for the guy to design games for his own sake to train his skills. But game ideas (even good ones) are a dime a dozen; anybody who's ever played games has had game ideas. Doesn't make any of them worth a SlashDot article.

Now if he had put some thought into how to actually implement the damn idea, instead of just saying "you can do everything!", it might have been worthwhile.

What makes you think they don't? I work at a game developer and probably hear 40 new game ideas a DAY. People constantly come up with ideas and bounce them off each other, looking for holes, seeing if there's a good nugget that can be used in an existing game or whatever. There's also practically a sport here: come up with a stupid concept and then figure out how to make a game out of it. (Anyone who wants to play the game version of My Dinner with Andre can email me.)

I suppose you have a point, and I agree that anyone can come up with ideas, it's just nice to know that people actually do come up with their own ideas, instead of leeching off other people, like some people I know.

...from someone who works in games too!Firstly, nice to see a Hard Boiled game in the works. I found out about it today, and it sounds pretty cool - a bit like Black, but with John Wooisms!

Secondly, Snow Day sounds pretty cool (tee hee!). Sadly, snow is such a tactile thing that I don't know if it'd work in a game for kids, unless you put them in a fridge too. Also, snow would probably be a difficult thing to simulate well - getting it right enough to make snowballs, snowmen, snow angels and snow forts woul

Please, you cannot tell me that the big sellers have some amazing game concept that raises them above all other games (excluding Katamari Damacy and a couple other games over the last few years). The big games are pretty much concepts like "Aliens take over the world by offering us immortality - go kill em" - HL2, "There's like these 2 factions with a bunch of races in them and you run around and level" - Wow. I havn't been keeping my eyes on sales figures but i'd suggest that ignoring a few well-done con

Freelance Foto was already sort of done, in the form of the Michael Ancel's game "Beyond Good & Evil." You got to take wildlife photography (with all the associated dangers - some of the subjects had teeth, claws, wings, death rays...) and journalistic photography (mostly of government misdeeds). It wasn't as dynamic or realistic as the game Curry suggests, but the basic idea was there, mixed in with a bit of Zelda and a bit of dumbed-down Metal Gear Solid.

In my opinion, no matter how fun "Snow Day" might be, it wouldn't be a success as far as sales go.It seems like a GTA 3 type game, at first look... but it's the mindless violence that brought most of the attention to GTA. Sure, it's a fun game, but tell me the majority of players don't enjoy it becuase they can run around blowing stuff up.

"Snow Day" seems like it would be way too kiddy a game to the majority of gamers. It seems like something that would be on a Nintendo system... not a bad thing, but some

It would probably sell more, but still not sell as well. Simpsons Hit and Run was a good game, for example. Not as polished as GTA, but still a quality game. But it didn't get anywhere NEAR the attention that GTA got. And I don't know any specifics, but I wouldn't say that Simpsons H&R was seen as an overwhelming success.

His site is very cool. A minimalist design that features a new game idea each week. I often think of games I would like to see made but I never write anything down. Perhaps, I should start. I like his concept of Snow Day and it's multiplayer implications. I look forward to seeing more of his ideas, especially as newer interfaces spring up (i.e. Revolution controller).

Some of his other game idea posts include... Freelance Foto, an on-the-run photojournalist game.

On-the-run?

"My name is Thomas Veil, or at least it was. I'm a photographer. I had it all: a wife, Alyson; friends; a career. And in one moment it was all taken away, all because of a single photograph. I have it; they want it; and they will do anything to get the negative."

Cute idea, but I've got enough real snow as it is. Canada sucks 5 months a year, but it's the country I hate least on this planet. Give me a game where the goal is to lounge on the beach all day, avoiding jellyfish during the day and diseased locals at night.

From TFA: "The trick would be to find ways to keep each activity as deep and fun as possible, while still maintaining the breadth of so many activities."
No kidding. Designing and implementing a game that only utilizes ONE type of gameplay, and makes that one kind fun and interesting, can consume two to three years of a team's time. And making a particular style of play fun generally means an engine specialized for that mode of play as well. And this game is supposed to have them all, and they're all st